“Don’t get too near that old plant again, Brekka,” warned George Jetson. He shuddered with the memory of it scooping her up in the mouth-like blossom and nearly munching her to pieces as it had done to the scabby.

“Silly boy, the man-eating plant is now my friend. He… or she… or it… is calling to me, telling me it will never harm me again. In fact, it wants to help me and protect me.”

As the emerald-green girl tadpole walked closer to the huge blossom, the plant seemed to be smiling with flower-petal lips. George looked at Menolly. Menolly looked back and shrugged her bare shoulders. She appeared to be creeped out by the carnivorous flower as much as George was.

Brekka stopped, naked and defenseless, directly under the giant blossom that was grinning at her. She reached up with her left hand.

The blossom lowered to her.

“Oh, no!” gasped George and Menolly together.

But the blossom stopped an inch above her hand and let her stroke it… her… or him… under what could’ve been a chin, but definitely had the look of sepals.

“That’s a good boy, Lester… er, good girl… er, well… that’s good anyway. You aren’t going to hurt anyone ever again, are you?”

The plant pursed its “lips”.

“Well, yes, I suppose you can eat all of those scabby thingies that you want. That wouldn’t bother me a bit.”

The plant rubbed leaves together to get an actual chirping sort of sound.

“Oh, really?”

“What did he say?” Menolly asked Brekka.

“He says he… or… she can provide cuttings and runners to make baby plants that we can eat. She says she… or… it can process carbon out of the air with photosynthesis and make plenty of food for us… It says it… or he… um, can feed the whole Bio-dome if we want it to.”

“That’s good…” said George, “but if the plant is our friend now, wouldn’t that be eating our friend?”

“Lester says the plants on his… er… her world do it all the time… eat each other, I mean.”

“That will help with some of the food shortage problem, won’t it?” asked Menolly.

“Sure,” said Brekka.

“Maybe we should go talk it over with Sizzahl?” suggested George. He really wanted to get himself and the girls away from the creepy plant-monster.

“You and Menolly go,” Brekka said. “I want to stay here and play with Lester.”

“Are you sure that’s safe?”

“Lester can’t eat Tellerons without getting really, really sick. So he will never again try to eat one of us… er, she won’t. As long as we keep Sizzahl and the Morrells away from it… er, him. Geez, the boy-girl thing is really confusing.”

So, George seized the opportunity to get away. He dragged Menolly with him. Brekka seemed happier with Lester anyway, and George was thinking… well, maybe he and Menolly could try some more… kissing.

This drawing is not done. I have plans. But this pen and ink Paffooney is a good example of a doodle-point I probably need to make. The plan does not occur before the ink hits the drawing pad. No, this one started with a circle. And for no good reason, I had to draw the girl’s face in the circle. But what was the face doing inside a circle like that? I next drew the bird. But if she’s so surprised to see a bird inside a birdhouse… Well, you get the idea. The story comes after the scribbling.

And here comes the controversial conclusion. This is exactly how life happens. Stuff becomes… and the reason why only becomes clear later. Curse me for a doodling philosopher!

The tadpoles had been totally on edge for half an Earther hour by the time they reached the bio-dome that Sizzahl had guided them towards. Only Tanith and Davalon had been trusted enough to carry skortch rays, and Tanith had nearly disintegrated the grav-cart by which they were moving the precious plants merely because she heard a loud, un-explained sound from the near distance.

But the door to the bio-dome was in sight. It appeared that they were going to make it without seeing, hearing, smelling, or even suspecting the presence of those nasty, horrible scabbies that Sizzahl had warned them about.

“What is that sound that sounds like claws clicking on concrete?” said Brekka through her helmet. “It sounds real close!”

Tanith whirled around and skortched a stone gargoyle drain-spout.

“Not there!” cried George Jetson, “It is behind us and coming fast!”

The dinosaur-like creature the scabby was riding disappeared in a fog of disintegrating atoms as Tanith whirled and fired. The scabby landed on Tanith and drove her down into the rubble at their feet. Davalon immediately launched himself onto the crazed lizard-man’s back, grabbed him around the throat and rolled him headfirst to the ground. As it was momentarily stunned, Davalon lifted Tanith and carried her towards the rest of the group.

“Look out!” cried Brekka. “There’s another one!”

The second was not a lizard-man, scabby or otherwise. It was some kind of mechanical man made of corroded and discolored metal. It had blades instead of hands, and it leaped on the prostrate lizard man, cutting, filleting, and murdering the scabby.

“It’s rescuing us!” cried Menolly in surprise.

“It’s going to kill you as soon as it is done with that scabby!” said Sizzahl from the shadowy doorway. “Come inside as quickly as you can and strip off every stitch of your clothes!”

Davalon was surprised, but never-the-less took action. He pushed Tanith to lead the way to the voice in the shadows. Then he forced Brekka, Menolly, and George into the shadows after her.

“Please, Dav, come with us,” said Gracie Morrell pulling on Davalon’s sleeve. Alden took hold of the other sleeve.

“Mother, I need to make sure that thing doesn’t catch up to you.”

“You may not sacrifice yourself to save us,” said Grace. “You may not!”

“You do not have permission,” said Alden.

“If you don’t come with us now,” said Gracie, “then we all stay and die together.”

“Um, Gracie…” said Alden nervously.

Davalon looked at the monster as its metal claws finished ripping the heart out of the lizard man’s lifeless corpse. Its metal visual sensors focused on the three of them. “Okay… let’s go fast!”

I have not been well. Six incurable diseases combined with colder, wetter weather will do that.

But Mickey has been busy. Yes, my goofy writer alter ego has been pecking away at a novel that pushes the boundaries of “strange” into a purple dimension where having a president that looks like a racist sour-lemon-flavored cookie dipped repeatedly in Orange Fanta with fingers covering the eye holes almost makes sense.

The novel is called Rezepte für Lebkuchen-Kinder which translates to Recipes for Gingerbread Children. The more I let Mickey work on it, the stranger it gets. It currently is about an old German lady who lives in a little Iowa town where she likes to bake gingerbread for children. But it is also a fairy tale where the fairies of Tellosia are still fighting their never-ending war against darkness. And in this story with a magical fairy war in it, there are gingerbread men who magically come to life. There are also teenage nudists, evil Nazis from the past, fairy tales that can solve life’s problems, and a lurking possibility of werewolves. (This is a companion novel to The Baby Werewolf and happens simultaneously to that story.) It has hit the 20,000 word mark. And you know how novel writing works. Too many words all put together into the same thing will magically merge and metastasize into book form. I know this is true, because I’ve seen Mickey do it before.

I finally finished this illustration for the novel Stardusters and Space Lizards. So I know that many of you are now thinking, “What the @#$%&! is that?” But I must confess that one of the characters in that science-fictiony humor thingy about planetary environmental Armageddon is actually a man-eating plant with three heads. But it needs to be pointed out, that though he/she/it seems to be menacing Brekka, Telleron girl space explorer, and at one point in the novel actually eats her, he/she/it does not like the taste of Tellerons, and befriends them later in the story. So, he/she/it eats earth humans and lizard people, but not frog-like Tellerons. This is probably only an important distinction to nutty sci-fi nerds like me, and you should feel completely free to ignore it.

It is important, though, for me to finish this humorous but didactic tale in a more timely fashion. If I don’t finish it soon, we are going to have a man-eating carrot-man-thing that likes to eat girls as our next president who will deregulate all polluting industries and cause the heat-death of the planet Earth. And then my novel will not only be unfinished, but also completely irrelevant. These are the worries that keep me up late at night.

Ant bites can cause an allergic reaction. So can the ragweed pollen that floats in massive quantities through the Texas air right now. So can reports that Donald Trump won the recent debate, despite the evidence presented before my very eyes that he was destroyed like a movie monster in the 1960’s at the end of the late night horror flick. Whatever the cause, I am feeling poorly. Another day of inaction and illness and sore throats and headaches. My daughter, the Princess, is also home from school today ill. She’s in slightly better shape than I am. But we will recover. The country, if it is truly as filled with ignorant racist people as the Trump presidential campaign has made it seem, will not. Soon we will be forced to shout, “Seig heil!” at the cinnamon Hitler we have apparently chosen to put in charge. How is he not polling negative percentages after that debate? He should have to give back three quarters of those votes he got in the Republican primaries.